


Better Than Being Alone

by without_a_license



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-22 16:35:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8292587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/without_a_license/pseuds/without_a_license
Summary: Whatever is struggling through his window sounds human, but it doesn’t sound like Nancy. One of Will’s buddies, maybe? He rolls over and throws off his comforter just in time to see Steve Harrington fall through his window. Steve is wearing nothing but plaid boxers, his feet bare and dirty, shivering and sweating and covered in goosebumps as he stumbles over to Jonathan’s bed.





	1. Chapter 1

Jonathan wakes up instantly to the scraping sound of his window opening. He was never a heavy sleeper, but these days he wakes up at the slightest sound, ready to fight for his life. (He keeps his window unlocked for Nancy. She still has his gun, and she’d be more likely to go to Steve’s, but still. If she needs him, he’s there.) 

Whatever is struggling through his window sounds human, but it doesn’t sound like Nancy. One of Will’s buddies, maybe? He rolls over and throws off his comforter just in time to see Steve Harrington fall through his window. Steve is wearing nothing but plaid boxers, his feet bare and dirty, shivering and sweating and covered in goosebumps as he stumbles over to Jonathan’s bed. 

“Steve? What the hell are you doing?” 

Steve looks wild, his eyes wide and unseeing. He pushes and shoves his way into Jonathan’s bed, muttering, “Let me in, let me in, let me in.” He doesn’t stop pushing until he’s lying on his back with Jonathan pulled on top of him and the comforter pulled over both their heads. 

Jonathan is acutely aware of the shuddering half-inch between their bare torsos as he supports himself on his forearms. For someone who spends as much time alone as he does, who rarely comes within touching distance of anyone except his mom and brother, this kind of closeness is overwhelming. He can smell Steve, his scent as foreign as Nancy’s despite being masculine. He can feel every place their skin is touching, arms and feet and shoulders. 

Just when Jonathan is beginning to get his bearings, almost ready to start asking questions, Steve reaches around and pulls him down so they’re pressed together completely. Jonathan immediately tenses every muscle in his body, but Steve goes limp, tucking his face into Jonathan’s neck and letting out a deep sigh. 

Jonathan waits, but Steve doesn’t seems inclined to speak without prompting, so Jonathan has to start. He can feel his words vibrating through both of their chests when he speaks. 

“Tell me what happened.” 

Steve’s soft hair pushes against his neck as he adjusts his head.

“Nance...Nance is out of town. Visiting colleges. With her mom. And my folks, they’re at the vineyard this weekend. Seeing clients. So, uh. So I was alone. Listening to music in my room. And I got up to turn out the light, and uh. I looked out my window. Out over the pool. You know, where, uh, where…” 

Jonathan can hear, feel Steve’s teeth chattering. He’s not sure what to do, how to comfort his former rival. What are they? Are they friends? Not important right now, he decides. 

He speaks, his voice hoarse.

“Where Barbara...” 

Steve sniffs. 

“Yeah. Where Barbara...” 

“Steve. What did you see?” 

A full body shudder rolls through Steve as he reaches up and curls his fingers tightly into Jonathan’s arm. When he speaks, Jonathan can hear how tightly he’s clenching his jaw.

“So I looked out the window...and I froze. I couldn’t move at all. Like I was paralyzed. And I saw this huge pale tree, like a sycamore, maybe. And I thought...my first thought was that the roots were exposed, because the river had washed away the dirt from the bank. And like, that made sense at the time, you know? So I was frozen, and I was staring at this tree, and then…” 

Steve’s body winds up, tense and tight under Jonathan. His fingernails dig into Jonathan’s bicep. 

“What happened? Steve, you gotta tell me what happened.”

Steve whimpers quietly.

“So all the sudden, I realized...there’s no river. There’s no river, and that tree was never there before. I’ve lived in that house since I was eight, and that tree has never been there before!” 

Steve’s voice was getting shrill. His anxiety was palpable. 

“And when I realized that, it was like an electric shock went through me. I was so scared, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Even more scared than when we faced that that thing, the Demogorgon or whatever. And I was staring at it, and the tree...it opened its eyes, and it looked at me, and the roots started moving, and I screamed, but nobody heard me because I was alone, and I ran out of my room and I ran down the stairs and I ran out the door and I didn’t stop running until I got here.” 

Jonathan drops his head down onto the pillow next to Steve’s head. In a strange sick way, he’s almost relieved. He’s been so tense ever since the Demogorgon, waiting for whatever shitty thing was going to come next. He couldn’t relax. And now the shitty thing was here, and there was nothing to do except deal with it. 

“Okay. Okay. What time is it?”

“It was almost one when I left.” 

“Still the middle of the night, then. You need to shower, and you can sleep here, and tomorrow we’ll go back to your place and look around.” 

Jonathan climbs out of bed and shakes out his hair. Steve still looks shell-shocked, his eyes big and his face pale. 

“Are you sure I need to shower, because that sounds dangerous and unnecessary and I’m mostly clean, so…” 

Jonathan gives him a judgemental look. 

“You ran a mile and a half naked, and I can smell your anxiety sweat from across the room. Leave the door open if you want. I’ll check on you every couple of minutes. Towel’s on the rack. Go.” 

Jonathan turns his light on as Steve makes his way hesitantly down the hall. He opens his dresser to find clothes that Steve could wear, and then he sees his alarm clock. 4:46. Steve had said it was one a.m. when he left his house. Even if he were running slowly (which Jonathan was pretty sure he hadn’t been) there was no way it had taken Steve more than a half hour to get to the Byers’ house. 

He walks down the hall and pokes his head in the bathroom, making sure Steve is still alive, as promised. His heart aches a little bit when he sees that Steve has left the door and the shower curtain both open, and is washing his hair with his eyes tightly closed. 

Jonathan goes into the kitchen and checks the clock there. 4:48. Assuming a generous half hour travel time, plus another half hour talking, that still left almost three hours unaccounted for. The question was, did Steve lose time while staring at the “tree,” or did he lose time between his house and Jonathan’s? 

He looks in at Steve again, who still hasn’t been eaten by the shower monsters, and goes back to his room, pulling out sweatpants and underwear and a t-shirt. His stomach flip-flops awkwardly at the thought of Steve wearing his tightie-whities, and he quickly hunts through his drawer for the newest, least embarrassing pair. 

The water shuts off, and Jonathan brings the clothes into the bathroom. Steve is buck naked, toweling off his hair, and looking a little more like his usual suave self. Jonathan blushes and looks at the ceiling, tossing the clothes in the direction of the bathroom. 

“You can borrow these. It’s almost five in the morning.” 

“What?” 

Jonathan glances back reflexively before looking away again. The after-image is burned in his eyes like a photograph. A drop of water tracking down Steve’s chest, the line of his hipbones diving down, dragging Jonathan’s eyes down, to his dick, jesus christ, he needs to stop thinking about this, he really is a creep.

“It’s almost five a.m. I checked. At some point tonight, you lost time.” 

“It wasn’t a dream.” 

“Didn’t say it was.” 

Steve is still shirtless, but at least he’s wearing pants. He has the towel wrapped tightly around his shoulders like a shawl. 

Jonathan clears his throat.

“Why’d you come here? After you saw the thing, why did you come here?”

Steve stares at him with unblinking eye contact. 

“I told you, I was scared. And you’re safe. So I came to you.” 

Steve’s honesty is more shocking than his nudity had been, and Jonathan looks away. 

Steve bumps into his shoulder on purpose as he walks back to Jonathan’s room, and the obscene bubble of their intimacy finally pops. 

“What if the thing did something to me, and then erased my memory? Could that happen?” 

Jonathan takes the towel from Steve and hangs it over the back of his desk chair. 

“I don’t know. I have as much experience with this stuff as you do. Do you have any unexplained injuries?”

Steve is sitting on his bed, wearing a shirt now. He looks lost. 

“I don’t think so. Do you think the kids know anything?” 

Jonathan shrugs. He’s still standing awkwardly in the middle of his room, unsure of where to put his body. 

“I don’t think it’s serious enough to wake them this early. I’m supposed to drive Will over to the Wheelers’ tomorrow so they can play their game. We’ll ask him then, and tell him to keep an eye out.” 

Steve nods, and seems to realize why Jonathan is still standing. 

“I can sleep on the floor if you want…”  
“It’s fine. You can sleep in the bed.” 

Steve shifts over, and Jonathan climbs in, their bodies close together on the twin mattress as they face each other. 

“I’m not queer,” Steve says matter-of-factly. 

“Me neither,” Jonathan replies. 

That is apparently all the reassurance Steve needs to snuggle into Jonathan’s shoulder again and close his eyes, which is so ridiculous that Jonathan almost laughs out loud. 

“Nancy and I slept together like this once, before we fought the monster.” 

Steve nods. “S’better than sleeping alone.” 

The next time he wakes up it’s 8:30, his left arm is numb under Steve’s head, and the clock radio is blaring Led Zeppelin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known that I do not endorse these characters' beliefs about what it means to be queer or the legitimate use of coercive violence. I just portray them. 
> 
> Also in the fic it is Saturday. Nancy comes home on Sunday. She went to Chicago with her mom and they are having Girl Time and celebrating her hard work and intellect by visiting colleges. She deserves it, and she's not coming home early for this shit. 
> 
> (I _am_ uncomfortable with the fact that I've written several thousand words without a single female character, though. Feels wrong.)

Jonathan rolls out of bed and gets in the shower, leaving Steve to wake up on his own to KSHE 95. Monster or no monster, Jonathan Byers has things to do. He’s understood for years that no matter what else is going on, every day has to start with breakfast and end with dinner. His mom and Will are both prone to skipping meals when they’re stressed or upset, which inevitably makes them feel worse. So Jonathan makes eggs, and spaghetti, and ground beef tacos, and baked potatoes. Nothing fancy, but everyone eats. 

His mom is already at work, so he makes three plates. He has a photograph in his mind of Will sitting at the table, eating breakfast and working on a drawing, thinking about the game he’s about to play with his friends. Just like before. If he can make reality match that image, if he can keep Will in the picture, it’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine. 

Reality doesn’t match the photograph. For one thing, Steve’s in it, awkward and cockeyed and jiggling his knees to fill the Byers’ boys silence. And Will’s not eating. His skin is gray, the circles under his eyes grayer, and he keeps picking up his fork and then putting it down without ever actually _eating_. He hasn’t even asked why Steve Harrington (of all people) is eating breakfast with them and wearing Jonathan’s clothes. It’s like he can no longer tell the difference between normal and weird, so he just bases his reactions on what everyone else is doing. 

Jonathan take his own plate to the table. He feels like he’s been himself through every interaction he’s had with his brother since November. He hates himself for not being easy with Will, like he used to be, and he misses Will so much it hurts. Hurts even more because he’s _right there_. 

“Will.” 

Will and Steve both look up at him, still and focused. Why does everyone look at him like he knows what he’s doing? 

“Have you noticed anything weird lately?” 

Steve coughs and Jonathan glares at him. Will is still looking at him with big eyes. He knows whatever comes out of his brother’s mouth is going to be a lie. Maybe he should’ve done this without Steve in the room. 

“No,” Will says finally. He looks down at his plate and takes three bites in quick succession, to appease Jonathan and stave off further questions. 

***

Later, when Will has gone to get dressed, Steve says, “Byers, your brother looks sick.” 

“He’s fine,” Jonathan snaps back. “That’s how he’s always looked.” 

Steve puts his arm around his shoulder and pulls him into a half-hug. 

“Byers,” he repeats, softer. “There’s something wrong with your brother.” 

Jonathan sags. “I know,” he whispers. 

***

Nobody answers when they ring the bell at the Wheelers’ house. Steve and Jonathan look at each other, fearing the worst, but Will just shrugs. 

“Mrs. Wheeler isn’t home. Mike and the guys probably didn’t hear us.” 

He opens the unlocked door and proceeds downstairs with Jonathan and Steve trailing behind. They pass Mr. Wheeler asleep in his La-Z-Boy with the newspaper draped over him like a blanket. 

Will’s friends all jump up instantly to greet him when he comes down the stairs, shouting his name and loudly trying to get him take sides in an argument about Lando Calrissian. 

Mike notices Steve first. 

“Nancy’s not here.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Steve puts his hands in his pockets and looks to Jonathan to explain. 

Before he can, Dustin cries, “Dude, isn’t that the guy who beat the shit out of Will’s brother?!” 

To Jonathan’s delight, Will jumps to his defense. “No way! My brother beat the shit out of him!” 

Steve lights up, suddenly radiating his trademark easy charisma. 

“Jonathan DID beat the shit out of me, that’s true, but I was being an asshole at the time. Anyway, I think it made me a better man and brought us closer together.” He directs the last line at Jonathan, with a sleazy grin. 

With that, Dustin and Lucas begin reenacting the fight, complete with sound effects, arguments about stance, and “do-overs” because “they haven’t taken the height differential into account, Dustin!!” Will and Mike melt into the background, quietly discussing their D&D campaign while the other two work out their excess energy. 

Steve sidles into Jonathan’s personal space. “I feel like we’ve lost our audience.” 

Jonathan offers him a genuine smile and whispers, “Watch.” 

“GUYS!” he shouts, projecting his voice like a lifelong P.E. teacher, “STEVE SAW SOMETHING WEIRD LAST NIGHT.”

Steve watches in awe as one by one the kids shut up and look at them: first Will, then Mike, then Lucas, and finally Dustin. 

“Wait, what?” 

Jonathan repeats, “Steve saw something weird last night. In his backyard, where Nancy’s friend Barbara disappeared. We want to know if you guys have seen anything.” 

The group begins to speak, with the general impression being, _“What did Steve actually see, exactly?”_

They shut up when Steve starts to tell his story again, hunching his shoulders and drifting back into Jonathan’s space. Jonathan can feel the heat radiating between his chest and Steve’s back, which is distracting and unnecessary. 

“Uh, it was definitely a monster. Not the same one as before. It looked kind of like a tree? Really tall, pale gray. It had black eyes, big eyes.They were closed at first, and when it opened them...that’s when I knew it was evil. But I feel like...if I saw it again, it might look different. I was seeing it, but I didn’t understand what I was seeing.”

Steve raises his hand to ruffle his hair, and Jonathan sees that he’s shaking. 

“This is embarrassing but it’s probably important, so… I freaked out. I was terrified. I ran to Byers’ house. Didn’t even put on shoes. I couldn’t think. All I could do was...be afraid. I don’t know why.” 

Maybe Steve’s terror is contagious, because the boys are quiet. Jonathan fills in to bridge the silence. 

“Somewhere between seeing the thing and getting to my house, Steve lost three hours. That’s all we know. Do you guys have anything? Dreams, monster sightings, lost time?” 

The boys remain quiet. They all look lost and scared. Except Will. Will looks like he’s using all his strength to swallow something important before he accidentally tells the truth. 

“Will?” Jonathan asks. His brother has never been able to lie, especially not to him. For twelve years, that’s been a constant. Will doesn’t lie. 

The moment stretches long, then Will shrugs and shakes his head, doing that unconvincing “innocent-eyebrow” thing that all kids do when they lie. 

“No. Nothing.” 

Jonathan loses something. It’s worse than his parents breaking up, worse than Lonnie being a jerk, worse than spending every day lonely and hated at school. The last time he felt like this...was the morning he woke up to find the sun high in the sky and the house quiet. 

**

He was 13. Will was 8. It was a school day, but his mom hadn’t woken him up for school. He wandered the house like he was in a dream, until he found his mom in the bathtub. There was an empty bottle of wine smashed against the floor, and her left wrist was bleeding sluggishly from a couple of shallow cuts. 

Jonathan didn’t call 911.

He didn’t call anyone. Maybe he should’ve, but he didn’t. 

He went into Will’s room, found him awake but lying in his bed in his pajamas, talking quietly to himself. He had been waiting to be woken up for school. Jonathan told him they weren’t going to school, that Mom was sick and they’d missed the bus. (Jonathan had never had a problem lying when necessary.) He told Will to pee in the backyard because Mom was throwing up in the bathroom, and he made him a bowl of cereal, and he told him to watch cartoons. 

Then he swept up the broken glass, and scrubbed the blood off the linoleum, and taped some gauze over his mom’s wrist. He splashed water on her face until she woke up, and he guided her, zombie-style, into her bedroom. 

He took Will to the park, and he used his savings to buy them pizza for dinner, and he put Will to bed that night. And the next day his mom woke up and went to work, and they didn’t talk about it and she didn’t apologize and nothing changed for anyone except Jonathan.

And it shouldn’t feel the same. A twelve-year-old brother telling a lie is not the same as a mother attempting suicide. He knows that. But it feels the same, because that was the moment he stopped trusting his mom, and up til now, Will has been the only person in his life that he _could trust_. And now he can’t. So there’s that. 

**

But that’s in the past. In the present, the boys are reassuring Steve that his panic doesn’t make him a pussy. Steve seems comforted by this. 

“It probably feeds on human fear,” Lucas is explaining, “so uses an attack that _creates_ fear--” 

“Terror Gaze,” Dustin interrupts.

“Yeah, Terror Gaze,” Lucas agrees, “And then it just _shluuurrrrppps_ up your fear like a milkshake. The lost time is probably how long it takes to feed.” 

“But how did it GET here?” Steve wants to know. 

“I have a theory!” Dustin announces. He flips over the game board (with Mike protesting, “I had that _set up_ , you can’t just--”), and holds out his hand imperiously. 

“I need chalk.” 

Will runs to the corner and grabs a piece off of an old playskool easel. They all crowd around as Dustin begins to draw. 

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since...you know.” The kids share an impressive four-way Significant Glance.

“Eleven said the monster was from the Upside Down. We figured the Upside Down was an alternate dimension. Down there is just like up here, except TERRIBLE!”

As Dustin talks, he’s dividing the back of the game board into irregular shapes with chalk. 

“Every location in the Upside Down matches a location in Hawkins. But we don’t LIVE in Hawkins.” 

He stares at them, daring someone to understand, to follow his train of thought. 

The silence stretches, from Will, to Lucas, to Jonathan, to Steve, until...

“The borders don’t exist,” Mike murmurs. 

Dustin snaps his fingers and points at him.

“EXACTLY! We live on an entire PLANET, and there ARE no borders. The Demogorgon was an apex predator, and it probably kept other monsters out of its territory--”

“Upside Down Hawkins,” Lucas supplies.

“Upside Down Hawkins,” Dustin agrees, erasing the borders from the center shape on the back of the game board. 

“But now the Demogorgon is gone, and that leaves a power vacuum. Right. Under. Our. Noses. And we all know happens when there’s a power vacuum…”

“Chaos,” the other three boys respond grimly. 

“Did you know that?” Steve whispers into Jonathan’s ear. “Because I did not know that.” 

When Steve whispers in his ear, Jonathan feels that weird swoopy feeling behind his stomach that you sometimes get on elevators or roller coasters. 

“That doesn’t explain how it got here,” he says loudly, focusing on the problem so he doesn’t do something stupid like blush or shiver.

There’s a general murmuring about this, broken by Will murmuring, “Doors.” 

The group quiets.

“What?”

“Doors,” Will repeats. “That’s what’s different about Hawkins. There’s doors. Between here...and There.” 

The temperature in the room seems to drop 10 degrees when Will references the Upside Down. 

Mike breaks the silence.

“If there’s doors...where are they?”

Will answers authoritatively, sketching their relative locations with Dustin’s chalk.

“My house. Steve’s house. Castle Byers. The lab. The school.” 

Mike is the first to respond, again. 

“If monsters can come through the doors...why not people?”


	3. Chapter 3

Pretty soon after that, Will clams up and the four boys get distracted by their D&D campaign. Jonathan was watching Will’s friends carefully, and he thinks Lucas is suspicious, at least. Maybe Mike, too. Hard to tell. But hopefully they’ll figure out what’s wrong with Will, and then they’ll _tell_ him so he can _help._

Jonathan and Steve exit the basement with plans to sneak into Nancy’s room. Holly gives them a supremely judgmental look from over the roof of her dollhouse, but Mr. Wheeler (who is now awake, peering down his glasses at his newspaper) somehow fails to notice two teenage boys tiptoeing up his stairs. 

Steve heads straight for Nancy’s nightstand, and is disappointed to find that the gun is not in the drawer under a sweater. 

“She must’ve taken it with her!” 

Jonathan rolls his eyes. 

“She doesn’t leave it in her nightstand when Mike and Holly are home and she’s not.”

He pulls the desk chair over to the closet and stands on it, retrieving a shoe box from the very back corner of the top shelf. He opens it, smirking at Steve.

“She keeps it here.” 

Steve glances down at the Smith and Wesson, raising his eyebrow at Jonathan.

“Alright, wise guy. Where does she keep the bullets?” 

He snorts at Jonathan’s blank look, and pulls open Nancy’s underwear drawer. 

“ _Jesus!_ ” Jonathan whispers, “You can’t just--” 

Steve looks at him like he’s crazy.

“I guarantee you Nance would be more worried about the fucking “terror demon” or whatever than us looking at her panties. Besides, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.” 

Jonathan looks intensely guilty and conflicted.

“Look, that was really messed up of me...I apologized to Nancy...I should probably apologize to you...I don’t want to…do that to people.” 

Steve shrugs.

“I thought it was kinda hot.”

Jonathan looks overwhelmed, and Steve grins, adding, 

“Plus, you know, we’ve all done some fucked up things. Even Nancy!”

Jonathan looks skeptical.

“Okay, it was mostly me and you. But still! The important thing is we’re sorry, and we’re trying to be better people.” 

He turns around, displaying the bullets. 

“Also I win.” 

**

They get back in Jon’s car and he automatically reaches for the stereo, switching from FM radio to the tape deck. Angry, grimy punk pours out of the speakers, as unexpectedly attractive to Steve as the loner who hangs out in the dark room.

_When I’m walking  
I strut my stuff  
And I’m so strung out.  
I’m high as a kite  
I just might  
Stop to check you out._

“Sorry, I can--I just--whenever I don’t have Will with me--”

He reaches to turn the music off, and Steve grabs his hand to stop him. 

“No, it’s good, I like this--who is this?”

Jonathan coughs and pulls his hand away a second too late, looking at his lap. 

“Violent Femmes. ‘S their first album, just came out last year. It’s--you might not like it--but. I think it’s really good.” 

“I like it,” Steve says quietly, looking at his own lap. He wishes Nancy were here. She could...something. Whatever needs to be done, or said, he doesn’t know, but Nancy would know. 

The music seems to shake Jonathan out of his shyness, make him angry. He drives aggressively, glaring at the road, and when they pull into Steve’s driveway, the stereo is howling,

_”Why can’t I get  
just one fuck,  
Why can’t I get   
Just one fuck,  
Guess it’s got something to do with luck,  
But I’ve waited my whole life for just one--”_

Jonathan slams the car door shut. 

“We’re here.” 

Steve adjusts his pants and follows him around the house. 

** 

They don’t find anything. 

They tramp around the backyard for a while, trying to figure out where the thing would’ve been standing. Jonathan is still mad at Steve for some reason, and he insists on staying three strides ahead, glaring at the ground. 

Steve is confused, and kind of lonely. So he calls (unwisely, as it turns out), “You know, it’s okay that you have a crush on my girlfriend.” 

Jonathan stops, and turns, and says, very emphatically, “No.”

Steve continues (still unwisely), “I mean, I think it’s sorta cool, like. We’re friends, you know, we have the same taste in music, the same taste in women...” 

One the one hand, he knows he should stop talking. On the other hand, Jonathan keeps turning around and paying attention to him, which is what he wants. 

“You need to stop. We are not friends. We are not talking about Nancy. And there’s nothing. Here.” 

He gestures to Steve’s backyard and the surrounding woods. 

Steve falls back, playing casual. He’s been shut down before. He can deal.

“Yeah, yeah, maybe it only comes out at night, you know, monster shit… So you wanna...hang out? I’ve got beer, a couple of joints, we could listen to music, you know. Whatever…I’ve got some posters you might like…”

Jonathan looks at him like he’s a child.

“I have to work from 4 to midnight. I have shit to do before that. I can’t just...babysit you all day.” 

Steve does a pretty bad job of concealing his sense of abandonment at this, and Jonathan softens. 

“Look, that’s why we got the gun. So you can keep it, just in case. Just...don’t look out the window tonight. Sleep in the basement. You’ll be fine.” 

They don’t talk as Steve walks Jonathan back to his car. At the last minute, Jon pulls the tape out of his car and hands it to Steve. 

“You can borrow this. Just for tonight. Give it back to me tomorrow.” 

He claps Steve on the shoulder and nods before driving away. 

** 

Steve doesn’t have a car. He drives his dad’s, sometimes, when his dad doesn’t need it. Tommy used to drive them around, before. But now he’s basically stuck at his house with a gun and a monster in the backyard.

So he gets drunk. 

What else is he supposed to do? 

He gets drunk, and he listens to the Violent Femmes, and he jerks off, and he punches a wall (which is stupid and hurts his hand), and he wakes up Sunday morning hungover but safe. 

** 

He calls the Wheeler household at 11 a.m., which sucks because Mr. Wheeler tells him that Nancy isn’t due back until that afternoon, and then he can’t call anymore without being obnoxious and falling out of favor with his girlfriend’s parents. He hangs around at home for a little while, waiting for the phone to ring, before eventually giving up and walking to the Byers’ house via the main roads. 

As he approaches, he sees that the blinds are open, for once, and Jonathan making eggs for his mom and brother. They’re doing their best happy family impression, and it’s kind of convincing, honestly. More believable than the Harrington show, for sure. As much as he doesn’t want to be alone right now, he recognizes that interrupting Jonathan’s Family Time would be a dick move, and he’s trying not to be a dick. 

So he lights a cigarette and starts to wander through the woods, vaguely back towards his house, but mostly walking toward anything semi-interesting. He kicks apart a rotting stump, and pulls down a broken branch (which he uses to smack other trees until he gets bored and drops it). 

The thing about being an extrovert, and being lonely, and being proud, is that you can’t ask for attention even when you need it. This has long been a problem for Steve. So somewhere along the way, he developed a pattern of behavior. Feel lonely, do something stupid, wait for someone to come along and stop you. It’s actually worked out pretty well for him in the past.

Because Steve Harrington was born lucky, he stumbles upon Castle Byers rather than a carnivorous monster. It’s pretty clearly not Jonathan’s fortress (too many toys and not enough porn), which means it’s Will’s. Steve’s willing to bet Jonathan helped make it, though. For one thing, it’s huge. Way bigger than the lean-to or tipi he’d imagined. There’s twine laced around and around the sticks that make up the frame, and when he pokes at the walls he finds they’re made of waterproof tarp sewn tightly together with fishing line. 

So he’s there, crawling around Will Byers’ secret hiding place, fingers running along the plywood covered in old flannel sheets for a floor. And he’s craning his head to read the spines of Will’s books, and he’s halfway imagining what it would’ve been like to grow up with Jonathan as a big brother. Someone who was never cruel, never disappointed. Someone who would spend hours stitching together tarp and dragging scrap wood out into the forest. It’s not quite right, but almost...he’s still trying to figure out what it is he wants with Jonathan. Something just out of reach, not friends, not brothers…

It’s almost there, like the important part of last night’s dream, like the word that’s on the tip of your tongue…

And then the fear rolls in. 

He recognizes it now, the way the world seems to flip between one blink and another, the way the fear floods in and extinguishes every other thought and emotion inside of him. 

This time he runs. He ran last time, too, but that was afterward. This time he’s up and running right away, and the thing is chasing. 

The world is flickering back and forth like a film projection. He’s running, and he feels like he’s gonna puke or piss himself, he tastes blood in his mouth--but every second is fractured into a thousand pieces, most them taking place in a dark and slimy hellscape, and a few in the cold clear Indiana woods. 

There’s never a moment where he feels safe, even in the Right Side Up, because it doesn’t last for longer than it takes to gasp before he’s back below. The thing is getting closer, he thinks it might be human, might be a man, and Steve is losing his sense of self, he is not-man, he is prey and he is going to die. 

Then he runs into a tree.

**

Steve Harrington was born lucky, and that’s the only explanation Nancy can come up with as she cradles his head in her lap on Jonathan Byers’ bed. 

Their working theory is that Steve happened to be in the Right Side Up (“We’re not calling it that.”) when he knocked himself out, and his sudden lack of consciousness severed the connection between him and the thing. 

After he’s received several rounds of scolding from both Nancy and Jonathan (rendered entirely ineffective by the fact that Nancy is petting his hair and Jonathan is talking to him), they eventually move past the fact that Steve is an absolute idiot who strolled up to one of the doors between this world and Hell and tried to play ding dong ditch. 

Jonathan rubs his hands over his face and looks at Nancy. 

“So what did the physics professors say.” 

She leans back on her arms.

“Not much. The guy from Northwestern seemed like he wanted to talk to me, but it turned out he was mostly interested in looking down my blouse.” 

Jonathan and Steve both growl at this indignity on Nancy’s behalf, and there’s a weird moment where they look at each other like, “Which of us has the right to be pissed off about this?” 

Nancy breezes past it. 

“I couldn’t find anyone to talk to at UIC. At the University of Chicago someone told me where the physics department was, so I just started knocking on office doors…”

“Where was your mother?” Steve interrupts. He cannot imagine Mrs. Wheeler allowing her daughter to cold-call random professors, although it’s a hilarious image. 

“She went back to the hotel to nap. Driving too long gives her a headache. Anyway, I found a PhD student who was willing to talk to me about alternate dimensions and the Many Worlds theory--there was a bit of a language barrier, I think he was Russian--and I kept asking him what the other dimensions would look like, and he kept telling me it was all theoretical. ‘Just numbers! Not like movies, you know--is just equations, see, I will show.’ And then he would write out these complicated equations and show me how the solutions required multiple invisible worlds...but he didn’t seem to have any experience with, y’know, the actual alternate dimension that we’ve visited.” 

She reaches for her bag on the floor. 

“Anyway, he actually gave me these old textbooks; he said the library was going to throw them away. I’m going to start working through them to see if I get anywhere.” 

Steve kisses her knee. 

“You’re a genius, Nancy Wheeler. Fighting monsters with science. Did Byers tell you about the new monster?” 

“He did,” Nancy drawls, “But I told him it couldn’t have scared you that badly since you’ve been wandering around looking for it ever since.” 

She flicks his ear. 

“I also told him you’d use any excuse to get into someone else’s bed, and that he shouldn’t trust your puppy dog eyes.” 

Steve rolls onto his back and lazily makes eye contact with Jonathan, although his words are directed at Nancy.

“I’m reformed, Nance. There’s only a few beds I’m trying to get into these days.” 

Jonathan interrupts whatever Nancy was going to say next. Maybe he’s uncomfortable with the flirting? Or maybe he’s just feeling left out. Steve lets his leg fall against Jonathan’s crossed legs, and then they’re touching, with no easy way for Jon to extricate himself. 

“Does anyone have any actual ideas? What are we going to do about this?” 

Nancy assumes this is directed at her, since Steve’s not much of a planner. 

“Actually, yes. We need to be able to control our movements between the Upside Down and here. Last time we couldn’t, and that’s how people got stuck. The only person we know of who _could_ voluntarily move from one to the other, was Eleven.” 

“Eleven was some kind of psychic. Telekinetic and who knows what else. Her brain could do things that ours can’t.

“But maybe we could _learn_ to do some of the things she could. I know the library has books on ESP, meditation, astral projection--I always thought it was New Age bullshit, but now… Who knows?” 

“Worth a shot,” Jonathan says.

“I’m in,” Steve agrees. “I’ve always wanted to be able to read minds.” 

Nancy and Jonathan roll their eyes simultaneously. Steve catches Jonathan looking at Nancy too long, the way he does sometimes. He doesn’t blame him. She’s just...more interesting to look at than anyone else in Hawkins. 

Nancy sighs like she's letting go of something, and leans toward Jonathan, across Steve's body. Jonathan loosens up a little too, stretching out his legs and dropping an arm across Steve's body, just...relaxing. Letting down some of their barriers. They're safe, with each other. 

That’s when Will opens the door, his eyes wide.


End file.
